webbrowser fails to open for system crash when it runs as root

I have no idea off-hand what could have gone wrong, so we need to poke a bit: Can you please do the following:

  $ killall update-notifier
  $ touch /var/crash/*network-admin*.crash
  $ /usr/share/apport/apport-gtk

This should re-trigger apport-gtk for the network-admin crash. Do you get any output at the command line?

What is your default browser? You said that opening the browser works for other bugs/crashes?

What is the output of

  $ dpkg -l '*apport*' python-problem-report

?

I followed the instructions above and it works correctly (i.e. opens a new window of firefox, as expected). I tried to test it though with network-admin crash (which is I can reproduce reliably so getting a .crash is not an issue) by doing :

killall update-notifier
rm /var/crash/*network*
<run it, make it crash>
/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk

and it doesn't trigger. This is a clean install of Feisty (i.e. not upgrade), with a new FF profile and all. Firefox is the default browser.

pandis@pandis-laptop:~$ dpkg -l '*apport*' python-problem-report
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii apport 0.43 automatically generate crash reports for deb
ii apport-gtk 0.43 GTK frontend for the apport crash report sys
ii python-apport 0.43 apport crash report handling library
un python-apport- <none> (no description available)
ii python-problem 0.43 python library to handle problem reports
pandis@pandis-laptop:~$

Ah, I see, that was a crash from a program that ran as root. The code that opens a browser as the user when apport-gtk is run as root is still a bit buggy. So, can you reproduce the bug with:

  $ killall update-notifier
  $ sudo touch /var/crash/*network-admin*.crash
  $ sudo /usr/share/apport/apport-gtk

? Does it make a difference whether Firefox was already open or not?

Still fails, but now I'm lucky enough to get an error message :-)

pandis@pandis-laptop:/var/crash$ sudo /usr/share/apport/apport-gtk
pandis@pandis-laptop:/var/crash$ Error: No running window found
The program 'firefox-bin' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 761 error_code 3 request_code 20 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

It doesn't make a difference whether firefox is already running or not.

I think apport-gtk doesn't have permissions to fire up something in your DISPLAY. A cookie issue?

If you use apport 0.49 (to be uploaded today), then this phenomenon only occurs if you use Firefox as your prefered browser. With Epiphany it just works. With Firefox I now get 'Firefox is already running, but is not responding.'. I don't know why, I have to figure this out later.

I created a test script which opens a browser as the user from a process running as root (through sudo). This is more or less what is happening when the user files a report for a system process crash.

   sudo ./test-81207.py epiphany

works just fine, but

  sudo ./test-81207.py firefox

errors out with 'Firefox is already running, but not responding'.

Alexander, any one else, do you have an idea why this happens? Is it a bug in my script or a bug in firefox? The environment is fully preserved, uid and gid are okay; I'm lost with this...

There seems to be some support in firefox for using it with sudo, so maybe you could use sudo to change the uid, since that seems to be the cause of the problem.

See the attached modified version of your testcase. This one works for me but I'm not sure if there are security issues with this approach...

Regards,
 Mika

Gosh, sometimes things can be so easy! :)

Thanks a lot Mika, you saved my day!

Glad I could help! :)

Fixed in bzr head, will upload after Feisty's unfreeze.

 apport (0.56) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * apport/ui.py, open_url(): When being invoked as root, call gnome-open or
     firefox as root through sudo instead of dropping our uid/gid and calling
     it normally. The latter does not work for Firefox for some mysterious
     reason. Thanks to Mika Fischer for this trick. (LP: #81207)
   * Add debian/local/ubuntu-bug.1: Manpage for ubuntu-bug. Add it to
     debian/apport.manpages.
   * qt4/apport-qt: Add some missing features that are present in the GTK UI:
     - Do not show details by default, add a button to show them.
     - Add complete/reduced bug report radio buttons.
     - Thanks to Michael Hofmann for this!